Saturday TimeformUS Highlight Horse: Next On Stage should get preferred pace setup

Belmont at the Big A | Race 5 | Post Time 3:07 p.m. (ET)

There appears to be plenty of speed in this first-level allowance, with no fewer than four runners doing their best work from the front end. Included in that pace equation is Minute by Minute (#3), who returns from a layoff for Chad Brown. You generally don't have to worry about time away for runners from this barn. However, she does seem like a horse who was cranked up to win on debut last September in a race dominated up front with a moderate pace. I wonder how much she can progress in her 3-year-old debut, especially since I haven't been thrilled with some of her workouts down at Payson Park.

Roman Grace (#8) could benefit from drawing outside of all the other speed, though I wonder if she really wants to pass horses. She's just not a turf horse, so I won't hold the last race against her. My biggest knock on her is that she took advantage of a track bias when she won at this level in February.

Army Gal (#2) is the logical horse to beat given that pace scenario, and she might be the best horse in the race anyway. However, she does have to overcome a layoff for Linda Rice, and her form tailed off a bit into the end of last season before she went to the sidelines.

I would just rather bet on Rice's other runner, Next On Stage (#4), at a bigger price. This is a step up in class, but I was encouraged by the way she navigated traffic and finished strongly into a moderate pace last time out. She wasn't always a horse that could rally from off the pace, but she used that style in her victory first off the claim for Rice. She's been away for a couple of months since then, but she's been working pretty consistently. She has both form and speed figures from last summer that suggest she fits at this level.